{"id":6336,"date":"2011-08-02T11:48:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T10:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=6336"},"modified":"2011-08-02T11:48:25","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T10:48:25","slug":"how-can-america-cut-its-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=6336","title":{"rendered":"How can America cut its deficit?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Economics can seem complicated and coverage of the debate over raising the US debt limit has been about process more than substance.\u00a0 But, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2011\/aug\/01\/us-debt-deal-tea-party\">this article<\/a>, George Monbiot, makes the implications of the agreement clear:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing  spending. Raising taxes means taking money from the rich. Cutting  spending means taking money from the poor. Not in all cases of course:  some taxation is regressive; some state spending takes money from  ordinary citizens and gives it to banks, arms companies, oil barons and  farmers. But in most cases the state transfers wealth from rich to poor,  while tax cuts shift it from poor to rich.<\/p>\n<p>So the rich, in a  nominal democracy, have a struggle on their hands. Somehow they must  persuade the other 99% to vote against their own interests: to shrink  the state, supporting spending cuts rather than tax rises. In the US  they appear to be succeeding.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Economics can seem complicated and coverage of the debate over raising the US debt limit has been about process more than substance.\u00a0 But, in this article, George Monbiot, makes the implications of the agreement clear: &#8220;There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing spending. Raising taxes means taking money from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6336"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6338,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6336\/revisions\/6338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}